


Anthesteria

by Harukami



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8844412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: The festival of Anthesteria is a three-day celebration of the dead. It's mere superstition, of course, but can Laurent turn down the chance to dream of one dead man in exchange for the risk of dreaming of others?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nabielka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/gifts).



"I cannot believe I am engaging in this kind of superstition," Laurent groused. It was the second day of the Anthesterion festival, Choës, and Damen knew that the amount of drinking going on had him on-edge, even though he'd avoided getting more involved than necessary.

Damen, who had drunk at every toast in a solid effort at winning the day-long drinking contest, grinned at him. Despite the amount he'd downed, he'd been eating plenty and spreading it out with water, and knew he was more coherent than Laurent would have been in his place. "Does that mean you're considering taking the drink of the dead tonight?"

"Surely not even your people believe that you can make the dead visit you," Laurent said dryly. "Or that dead spirits persist after death at all. It's a truly barbaric thought, and Akielons aren't actually—"

He didn't finish it, but Damen appreciated the thought, especially given that Laurent clearly didn't actually know how he felt about the matter, and that tended to make him sharper. Damen shrugged a shoulder. "I've had it happen before," he said easily. "I've also had it fail to happen. Most people just assume that the drug in the drink of the dead makes you more suggestible, so your willing it to happen gives you dreams to match."

"At which point there's no reason to do it regardless."

He was uncomfortable, Damen realized. It was understandable, given everything. He sat back a little, nursing his current cup. "There's something to be said for tradition," he said. "But you don't need to participate."

Laurent looked as though he'd swallowed something bitter. He said, tasting each word as it passed through his mouth, "Ah, yes. I'm sure that would be a terribly popular move, to snub the first Akielon holiday after we have melded our kingdoms."

"It's a private affair. Withdraw to our rooms, if you like, and simply—"

"Lie when asked?" Laurent asked politely.

Damen spread his hands as if to acknowledge that he did not have anything in them, and certainly not the reins of this conversation. "Yes. Lie. I simply thought that even if there were people you wished to never see again, there might..."

"Might?"

He couldn't say the name. Not with Laurent this tense. "...Might also be those you wished you had another chance to talk to," Damen concluded.

Laurent stared at him. Damen returned his gaze mildly, watching as the warring armies of Laurent's heart took and lost ground in a rapid exchange on his internal battlefield. 

"Ah," Laurent said.

Damen smiled helplessly as the sharp edge of that word cut the air between them. "I just thought there might," he repeated.

"Hm," Laurent said. The conversation was over.

***

Finally, the public celebrations and drinking in the name of those lost in the last year was winding to a close and people were withdrawing to their own rooms. Once he and Laurent were situated on the bed, Damen poured himself a cup of the thick medicinal-smelling drink. He hesitated visibly, then picked up Laurent's empty cup. "Are you sure?"

Laurent's stomach gave a little flop. "Of course. First you invite me to do so in a way nearly impossible to refuse, then you ask me if I'm sure," he said.

"You're sure," Damen confirmed in a low, warm voice, and he poured.

Together, they sat and stared at their cups. Laurent finally looked up at Damen's face again. "Is there any reason we're waiting—?"

"Think about the dead," Damen said. It sounded like his voice was raw in his throat, and Laurent decided not to comment on it. "About those you wish to see. It will be the invitation. The drink will simply open you to it."

"A seance sounds simpler and less gullible," Laurent said, unable to quite keep himself from sniping, needing to let the anxiety out somehow. But he tried: he thought of his brother, thought of his brother, _thought of his brother._

This part was easy. He never stopped thinking about his brother. He thought of his brother whenever he looked at Damen, which was constantly. He thought about his brother whenever he woke up and knew it was another day without his brother in it, and he thought about his brother when he fell asleep, hoping that if he dreamed of any family at all, it would be his brother.

He tried not to think of his uncle, and knew, even as he did, that the blank space of his thoughts was forming an outline in absence.

"Now," Damen said, rough, "we drink."

Laurent lifted the cup to his lips, wrinkling his nose at the flavor but downing it anyway. The smell had warned him of the sharp, spice-tinged taste, and it kept him from gagging. "Delightful. I see why most people drink until they've lost their sense of taste beforehand."

"That's one reason for it," Damen agreed warmly. 

Putting the cup down with a click on the table, Laurent said, "And now it forces us to sleep." He'd avoided expressing his displeasure about that part before this. Damen did this yearly; it was clearly safe. And yet. And yet.

"Yes," Damen said. He rose, taking Laurent's hands with him. "We sleep. It will be my first year not experiencing this alone."

"Haven't taken a lover on one of these nights?"

"No," Damen said simply. "It's too private."

Laurent let Damen lead him to bed.

***

Damen viscerally remembered the weight of his father's hand in his hair, and he drew a shuddering breath as he opened his eyes and felt it again.

"Father," he said.

Theomedes stood at his bedside, looking down with an odd smile, nostalgic and sad while also a little resigned. "Damen," he said. "So I get to see you king after all."

His father's voice passed over him and Damen shuddered. He sat up, knowing even as he did so that in real life, his body was still asleep and unmoving in bed. The waking up was itself a dream. "Yes," he said. "I am king, and Kastor is dead."

"I never thought it of him," Theomedes said. "I never once believed my illness was anything more."

"No man would think it of their son."

"Many would," Theomedes said. "I wish I had, for your sake. So you would not have had to..." he shook his head.

Damen was suddenly very aware of the warmth of Laurent sleeping in the same bed as him. Of the banners that had slowly begun to accumulate on the previously bare walls, the every day compromises they unconsciously made between them of needing to balance out the places they found comfortable. Vere finding its place within Akielos. He said, "There's no point in regretting the past."

"You say that to a ghost," Theomedes said sharply. And then, "Is it instead the future we should regret?"

"Father—"

"A future of fripperies and overindulgence? A future of Veretian voices in my halls, Akielon faltering as Veretian words infiltrate the language until no pure sentence fully exists? Words said with the wrong stresses put in the wrong places, if not replaced here and there entirely?"

"It's a fine language, and they will learn ours likewise."

"Ah, they will learn. And what will we learn? You are already changing centuries of habit. First the slaves, then speech, then what? Clothing? Will our men only lay with men and women with women until marriage out of their useless concept that children require wedlock? Will our bodies become anathema, skin something sexual as opposed to just the flesh we wear and have worn since birth—?"

Damen reminded him, "No king rules as his father had. You did not."

"I changed things less in my reign than you have already," Theomedes told him.

"Sometimes things need to change. Would you have preferred Kastor rule? Would you rather deals made with Veretians to poison Akielon fathers and send their sons away—"

Theomedes drew himself up, stricken. "You were always meant to be King."

"I know," Damen said, pained. He already regretted striking back.

"That boy gave you those scars."

"That boy," Damen said, "gave me the only space I'd had to mourn you."

For a long moment, Theomedes was silent. "I mourn Akielos now," he said. "But I also have faith in you to rule. These two things war inside me. Can you understand that about your father?"

"It's not the dead's place to mourn," Damen said. "Come to me in a year and criticize what I have built when I have had time to build it. Do not criticize for what I may build when I am only beginning to lay the foundation."

"I will," Theomedes said. He put his hand back on Damen's head. "The best a son can do is prove a father wrong."

Damen said. "I will." And then, despite himself, a little raw. "And you have faith in me?"

"You will accomplish something," Theomedes said, as he started to fade. "And I will see what that is."

***

"I cannot believe you would betray your own family like this," Aleron said, which, Laurent had to admit, was a strong beginning. 

Laurent examined his fingernails. "You were particularly bad at identifying that risk," he said acerbically. 

Aleron ignored the counterattack, gesturing around them. "Your brother's killer," he said, sharp. As if that point had not been driven home with every breath that Laurent took that had Damen's scent in it. As if that point hadn't been pushed into place and twisted every time Damen smiled and every time that Damen's brows drew down and every time he felt Damen's presence nearby with comfort and joy instead of hatred.

"You're hardly saying something I don't know," Laurent said, lifting his brows. "Anything else you'd like to add?"

"You were never meant to rule," Aleron said. "And you have changed. Living without myself and your brother has changed you. You were a sweet child when you preferred your books. You are more like a snake than a king now, and I fear for Vere."

"Honestly, that's not a very inventive comparison," Laurent told him. "Perhaps if _you_ had read more books you could have come up with something better."

Aleron said, "What is to become of Vere? Are we to slowly crumble into barbarism? This room is bare and plain and with nothing to please the eyes in it."

"I have found something that pleases my eyes in it," Laurent said.

It took a moment to dawn, and Aleron drew a sharp breath in. "Ah, yes, how fortunate for you. And the rest of our people, Laurent? What are you leading them into? You're consorting with ghosts—right now, you're engaging in some sort of primitive ritual! Where will this end—I will tell you, Laurent, since you seem unaware. Barbarism and perversion."

"Barbarism and perversion," Laurent repeated.

"With so much flesh exposed everywhere our people will lose their self-restraint. Men will lay with women outside of wedlock and children will become fodder for slaves and war, like the Akielons have it—"

Laurent smiled. He felt it happen, so he knew he'd done so. "Strange. I have found much less care for children among my own people. Perhaps these barbarians will be a good influence in that area?"

His father shouldn't know. If it were a real ghost, it surely couldn't. Laurent knew already it was a dream, as Damen had said it most likely would be, because Aleron went white. "Laurent—"

"There are areas of Akielon culture that, hm, bother me. There are areas of Veretian culture that bother Damianos," Laurent said, enunciating Damen's name as if caressing it with his lips and tongue. "Perhaps what is needed is an outside perspective, Father."

"An outside perspective is never what is best for a country."

"Strange, coming from a man who never considered that his own brother was trying to kill him," Laurent remarked. "Perhaps if you'd seen our family's dynamic from the outside, it would have occurred to you, and I would still have a father and a brother, and Vere and Akielos would not be joined in a marriage bed."

"With your brother's killer," Aleron began again, but he was whisked away as if pulled back. Laurent sat up, taken by surprise, eyes widening.

***

Kastor did not come. Damen waited and waited, chilled in his bed, hoping and dreading him, but Kastor refused to come.

***

Aleron had been replaced. Laurent stared helplessly at the new spirit standing there.

"He talks as if I cannot speak for myself," Auguste said, "and both of us dead on the same day by the same man's doing. If he hated the idea of some kind of primitive ritual so much, he could always have not taken this door you offered him."

Laurent was abruptly sure he was going to vomit. 

Auguste smiled at him, brilliant and beautiful. "Hello, little brother," he said.

He was. He absolutely was. Between the anxiety and the hope and the terror welling in his stomach, there was no room for the meal he'd eaten earlier. "Auguste," he said, airlessly.

Auguste had been born to rule, as Laurent had not. Strong and handsome and powerful rather than bookish and small and beautiful. A warrior. A natural leader. Even in death his charisma came with him.

Laurent was brutally aware of the heat of Damen's body asleep in the bed behind him. He sat frozen, awaiting judgment.

"Don't be so silent," Auguste chided him gently. "Come greet your brother." He knelt down, and held his arm out.

Without meaning to, Laurent swung his legs out from the bed, took a few ungraceful steps toward him, and sank down into his brother's arms.

This felt real. _He_ felt real, for all that Laurent knew that in real life, he was asleep in bed. He wanted to scorn the experience. Just an Akielon tradition, not something even they truly believed. Just words suggesting images into reality as he was drugged into sleep. 

But he could not. He knew the feel of his brother's arms. He had forgotten his brother's scent, but, as he buried his face in Auguste's shoulder, he knew it as though he had never been allowed to lose it.

He told himself he was not crying.

"Ahhh, Laurent, Laurent. I'm so sorry. I never meant to leave you," Auguste was saying, useless platitudes in the face of reality. His strong hands were stroking Laurent's hair, infinitely tender. "I wanted to stay with you forever and protect you always."

"And instead you were killed," Laurent said, "on the battlefield, by an Akielon I have opened my legs to." He was pleased to hear his voice was not shaking and did not sound wet. There was a masochistic thrill in saying the words, in knowing even Auguste would be disgusted with him for this. 

"People die on the battlefield," Auguste said instead. "I knew that when I went onto it."

"I'm sure dying hurt."

"Dreadfully. I don't recommend it, little brother," Auguste said. He squeezed a fistful of Laurent's hair, gentle. "Stay alive as long as possible."

This was the worst. Why had he agreed this? Why had he wanted to see Auguste again enough to accept despite all his misgivings? 

"I think about it. When he looks into my eyes, with his feelings laid bare in them," Laurent confessed. "I think that the last thing you saw was his eyes, full of triumph at killing you."

"Honestly, that was the second last thing I saw. The last was my guts."

Laurent definitely was going to vomit. He laughed instead, the sound bubbling up through the wetness in the way. "Oh. That makes it so much better."

"People die on the battlefield," Auguste repeated. "I could have slain him instead, and we would have crushed the Akielons, and his father would have mourned a son and his brother a brother."

"His brother wouldn't—"

"Don't doubt that sort of complication of feeling. You've mourned even family you hate."

Laurent squeezed his eyes shut, tense against the blow.

"I'm not saying that to attack you, Laurent. I want you to forgive yourself a little."

"For spreading for an enemy."

"Rather than your legs," Auguste said dryly, "perhaps it's your heart that you opened. Is that something you could have done without him, after everything that happened to you?"

"I shouldn't care to speculate," Laurent said.

"It's not the dead's place to speculate, and yet, here I am," Auguste said. "He treats you tenderly. He values you and everything you have to bring to the world."

"Ah, and what do I value? Everything he's taken from it?"

Auguste said, "You already know you love him despite his killing me. Why can't you love yourself despite that?"

Laurent shook Auguste. "You're impossible. You've always been impossible. I can't think like you or like him, do you understand that?"

"I understand that," Auguste said. He leaned over and kissed Laurent's forehead. "Ah, well. Love or hate yourself. Know I won't hate you for it."

"This is just a dream."

Auguste shrugged. "I can't argue the point. But I love you, and if he gave you some of the love you need, I'll heap praises on him. I'd like to see what kind of world you two make between you. I should think it would be a good one."

Laurent pulled away finally. He didn't rub his arm across his eyes, because to do so would be to acknowledge the state they were in. "I wish you had come to me later, not now," he said sharply.

"Why?"

"Following this up with the other ghost who'll have words for me will be a bitter pill," Laurent said, like it was something he could be flippant about.

Auguste smiled again. It was incongruous to what he'd just heard, and Laurent felt a horrible stab of betrayal for a moment, and hated himself for that as well.

Then Auguste said, "No. He won't come."

"I thought any of the dead could," Laurent said, and wished he didn't feel snubbed at the thought he wouldn't, after everything. "It's just a dream. I thought about him, whether I wanted to or not. I always do. So he'll come."

Auguste said. "I won't let him." 

Laurent stared at him. 

"I won't let him," Auguste repeated again, this time a promise rather than a statement. "I couldn't protect you in life. But he and I are both dead now and I can do something about it. You don't need to be haunted by the dead. I don't want that for you."

Control slipped through his fingers. He crumpled down, sobbing, and Auguste caught him before his knees could hit the floor, holding him.

He did not dream of his uncle.

***

Sunlight was pouring through warmly as Damen awoke. The dreams sat heavy in his heart, ashen and miserable, the dissatisfaction of not finding anything he'd hoped to find from it. But that was nothing new. He didn't need a festival to feel shaken in his sense of family. And it wasn't important right now, either—Laurent was the one who may have had worse dreams.

Damen opened his eyes, reaching for Laurent and found him already awake in bed, eyes red, expression as hard to read as always.

"Good morning," Damen said, and brushed his knuckles across Laurent's cheekbones, searching his face for hope or despair, for regret or pain.

Laurent didn't resist, not even that usual momentary hesitation. He rolled forward into Damen's arms and let out a sigh against him.

"Traditionally, do you talk about what you encountered last night?" he muttered into Damen's skin.

Damen ran his fingertips down Laurent's back, feeling out and gently worshiping every knob of his spine. "Not traditionally," he said. "But you can if you want to."

"No," Laurent said. Damen still couldn't tell what he was feeling—but then Laurent smiled against Damen's skin. 

"Laurent?"

Laurent tilted his face up, smiling warmly. There was something more relaxed in his expression than Damen had seen before—infinitesimally small, the faintest loosening of tension, but undeniably there. Like he saw Damen more clearly, or without something else in the way.

"Not yet," Laurent said. "There's something to be said for tradition." Damen accepted that—all the more willingly when Laurent leaned up and kissed him.

Sometime later, Damen pulled back with a laughing groan. "We'll be expected to make an appearance to our people," he said.

Laurent sighed, but he was smiling, that warm, sunny look he sometimes got when he was sleepy and pleased. Whatever tension from the dream had lingered with him had melted away, and Damen felt his own melt away to match. 

"Our people," Laurent repeated.

They tangled their fingers together.


End file.
